Blue State Healthcare: Former Football Player Sues College After Nearly Losing Leg to Staph Infectio

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,307687,00.html

Former Football Player Sues College After Nearly Losing Leg to Staph

Infection

Friday, November 02, 2007

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - A former college football player has sued Iona College

over an antibiotic-resistant staph infection he says nearly cost him his leg

two years ago.

Nick Zaffarese accused team trainers of initially brushing off his

burgeoning methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, infection

in September 2005. He also called the team's locker room an unsanitary

environment in which players shared towels and equipment.

Iona spokeswoman Cecilia Donohoe declined to comment on Zaffarese's lawsuit,

filed this week in state Supreme Court in Westchester County. She said the

New Rochelle college has a policy of refraining from discussing pending

lawsuits.

But Donohoe called the college's athletic and other facilities immaculate.

"Our leadership does not tolerate unsanitary or unclean conditions," she

said in an e-mailed statement.

The college recently disinfected a weight room and went over hygiene advice

after 10 members of an athletic team were diagnosed with MRSA in September.

The college has declined to identify the team.

While one student-athlete was hospitalized for a time, those cases were mild

skin irritations, Donohoe said.

Zaffarese, now 23, said his bout with MRSA began with an ingrown hair on his

inner thigh. He told trainers it was painful and swollen, but they did not

advise him to seek medical attention until he told them it was oozing,

according to his lawsuit. In the interim, he had gone home from a game with

a high fever and collapsed, the lawsuit said.

"I got a call from my son telling me that his leg was black and he was going

to have surgery," said the former player's father, Tony Zaffarese, of

Pompton Plains, N.J. The younger Zaffarese said he ultimately had seven

surgeries on the leg.

The lawsuit seeks more than $250,000 in damages.

A government report last month found that more than 90,000 Americans get

potentially deadly staph infections each year. The bacteria has been blamed

in the deaths of a New York City middle school student and a Virginia high

school senior last month.